#hinny100

When he reached for the jug of water, he dared to glance at her again. Again, there was that raised eyebrow. Almost playful. Mostly, asking.

Harry put his knife down, with a perfectly casual expression, and carefully lifted his heel off the floor to join in on the slow movements under the tabletop.

Ginny had no visible response to this whatsoever, except that her eyes glazed over.

As the slow rubbing of jeans against jeans continued, two very different parts of Harry were going berserk. One was feeling decidedly dizzy and thought she was positively insane for even starting this in front of her entire family – the other one agreed, but found that he was rather enjoying the whole thing.

Ginny laughed at one of Ron‘s jokes, leaning back in her chair as she did, and let her right hand fall on Harry’s thigh, as though by accident.

Harry nearly choked on his water.

One day, he found himself thinking, that girl is going to be the death of me, and I won‘t even complain about it.

„Are you okay?“, she asked innocently, looking directly at him.

Harry pressed his knee into hers, holding the eye contact. „Spectacular“, he said, with all the nonchalance he could possibly muster.

Ginny‘s eyebrow twitched. Her eyes lingered on him far longer than they usually would have, and Harry cast a glance around the dinner table to make sure no one else had picked up on … whatever it was they were doing.

But no one did pay them any attention. Ginny‘s hand was still resting on his thigh, her fingers slowly bending and trailing along the fabric of his jeans, their legs were still touching under the tabletop, and Harry‘s mind was running full-speed in a direction that had everything to do with the way she was biting her bottom lip.

Which is why, seventeen excruciating minutes later, they’re practically running up to Ginny’s bedroom and slamming her bedroom door behind them. Harry swiftly grabs her face between his hands and crashes his mouth into hers, and together they tumble backwards. Ginny gasps into his mouth when her back touches the wall, where Harry’s body pins her into place.

“I hope you had fun”, he mutters, when they’ve run out of oxygen. “Doing that under the dinner table just to mess with me, really?”

Ginny bursts into laughter. “Yeah, actually. I’m sorry”, she says and wraps her hand around his neck. “That must have been the longest dinner of your life.”

She’s still chuckling when he kisses her again, but not for long. Soon, she is gasping and arching her body into Harry‘s, opening her mouth to his tongue.

„You did seem to enjoy yourself“, she mutters into his neck when they‘re catching their breath again. 

„Maybe I did“, Harry breathes, struggling to maintain composure while Ginny kisses along the side of his neck and along his jaw. „Still a bit confused where it came from, though …“

„Just thought it was a spectacular idea“, Ginny grins, pausing when he kisses her again, and slowly pushing her hands under his t-shirt. „And then, well … maybe – the Auror thing is a bit sexy.“

Harry raises his head to look at her, and Ginny laughs at the state of his hair and his face. „It is?“

She rolls her eyes and pulls him into the next kiss. Her tongue finds his mouth with an urgency that turns his legs into jelly: for a second and an eternity nothing is real but Ginny’s fist pulling at his hair and her short fingernails that dig into his back under the t-shirt, and her mouth, her hot, gasping mouth that is kissing him like there is no tomorrow.

“Wow”, Harry gasps, when they break apart. Ginny smirks and buries her face in the crook of his neck to press kisses into his heated skin. Harry feels shivers run down his spine – Ginny’s hands are all over his back, then tugging impatiently at his t-shirt, so Harry pulls it over his head and tosses it away without looking, melting into her arms around his body.

He nimbly reaches for the top button of her green plaid shirt, undoing the buttons with the hands of someone who has unbuttoned this exact shirt several times before.

And Harry is aware of the way Ginny gasps into his mouth. He’s aware of the fact that their t-shirts have ended up on the floor a lot lately. He’s aware that their hips are locked tightly together, and that these past few weeks, Ginny’s hands have been finding their way to his belt and much as his have to hers. He’s aware they haven’t gone further, not yet.

He’s not sure why. He’s not sure he cares. Even though every time their hands start to wander, so does his mind. It does when they’re just kissing. It does in the shower. A lot.

He wonders if Ginny’s does, too.

But then she kisses him again, and it‘s a simple kind of bliss that just doesn‘t seem to get old: That he‘s eighteen, alive, half-naked and snogging his girlfriend against her bedroom wall like it‘s the only thing that matters in the world.

“Oh. That sucks, mate.” Pause. “If you fancy distraction, I can tell you about this ridiculous thing Crookshanks did last night. Hermione’s still in shock.”

“They’d definitely love him. Reckon your Dad would like the name, yeah?”

“I’m sorry. You can have the last slice of pizza, if you want.”

But after that, they’d carry on like it was any other day, except Ron would deal with anyone who knocked on their office door; and Harry liked that best.

The first year in the house, Ginny asked if he wanted to put a Confundus Charm on the front door, so no trick-or-treating children would disturb them. Harry said he didn’t mind – and so, every year, they turn on the TV and watch a movie that doesn’t remind Harry of anything at all. But Ginny gets the door if he can’t force himself to smile, and Harry stays on the sofa until she comes back, and sometimes she nicks some candy from the bag in the hallway and sneaks it into his hand. She curls up next to him, and Harry buries his nose in her hair and waits for his chest to stop burning.

When their own children got old enough to go, they made it a habit to be back before the credits roll. They take off their coats and costumes and sit on the carpet in the living room; and without fail, each of them has brought back a piece of candy specifically for Harry. All three treats find their way into his hands silently, and then the five of them sit on the floor digging their way through the rest of it. Ginny tells Lily if the movie was any good at all, and Albus asks if his ironic wizard costume is still clever even though it’s the third time he’s worn it.

The graveyard is reserved for another time. Sometimes, when Halloween falls on a weekend, they’ll go during the day, before the streets fill up with gaggles of children cheering and nosily inquiring about their lack of costume. If not, there is always the first of November. Ginny holds his hand, the kids take turns carrying the flowers, and they don’t bicker the slightest bit until they’re back home.

But Ron is long gone from the Auror Department, and Harry doesn’t have the luxury of spending the day buried in mindless paperwork anymore. James and Al are at Hogwarts, and this time next year, Lily will be, too.

So it feels the same, for now, but it’s bound to change. Harry has gotten so used to the comforting noise around him, he doesn’t think he’ll know how to deal with the silence when it comes back.

Ron rings, now. Their conversations sound the same every year, echoing lunch breaks in their joint office, years ago.

“Hi. It’s me.” Ron is usually quite pleased with himself for using the Muggle contraception so effortlessly, but on Halloween night, he’s sure not to let it show too much.

“Thank you for calling.”

What comes next is a silence for Harry to take: It’s what’s left of Ron’s habit to stretch his leg under their office tables and bump his foot into Harry’s. There’s no obligation here: Some years, they just listen to each other breathe, and rustle around their respective houses, until Harry changes the subject and Ron takes the cue.

Some years, they talk the way they always have. Few words. Simple comfort.

“Alright. Well, call, if you need anything.”

“Sure. And thanks again. For checking in.”

“Yeah, of course, mate.”

Then, they stay on the line for a little longer, just in case. And when Harry hangs up, the burning in his chest has eased a little.

“Ready to go?” Ginny.

“Yeah.” Harry puts down the phone and makes sure to reach for her hand, if briefly, in passing. “I'll go get the flowers.”

“I’ll tell Lily. See you in a second, babe.”

That is Ginny’s part.

Her first year playing for the Harpies, she was stuck at practice. They didn't make plans – none apart from the usual, and still, when Harry came stumbling out of their fireplace that night, her Patronus was there, filling the living room with warm, silver light, waiting for him, and he somehow managed not to have a panic attack right there and then.

“I’ll be there by eight, and if I’m not, my Patronus will be and tell you when. Either way, you will know. I promise.”

She got home twenty past eight, exactly like Patronus number three had told him she would, and crawled onto the couch next to him.

Once she'd reached for his hand, she looked up at him and said: “I’m sorry for the wait, Harry. I didn’t know it would take so long.”

Even now, Harry remembers all the directions his emotions ran when he looked at her – how quietly baffled and yet, wildly, weirdly touched he was.

“It’s no big deal”, he said.

Ginny gently put her head on his shoulder, and Harry slouched into her, soaking up the warmth she radiated. “I didn’t want to worry you”, he heard her say. “I didn't want you to come home and – find the house empty.”

Harry was so taken aback, so in awe of her, and so heavy with sadness, he couldn’t speak. After a minute or so, he said, with a tight throat: “Thanks – just … for thinking of that.”

“I just wanted you to know I’d be there.”

Lily holds on to a bouquet of bright yellow flowers with one hand and to Harry’s fingers with the other. She’s ten, going on eleven, and she walks by her parents’ side with steady steps as they make their way down the street that leads to Godric’s Hollow’s graveyard.

It has taken Harry a long time to learn to talk about them. The handful of people he talks to has grown over the years, slowly and steadily, but remains a handful, still. There’s Ron, and Ginny, and Hermione. There’s both Weasley parents, and Andromeda, and one Christmas, George. Harry asks Hagrid about his parents, and his children ask him about them. Harry has told them who they’re named after, and why they’re not there anymore.

What he hasn’t learned is how to talk to them. He stands in front of the tombstone, and despite all the years behind him – all the things he’s said to Ron and Ginny and everyone else – there is nothing he can say, now, here.

Outside of the graveyard, Lily and James Potter’s names are never far. They are mentioned over dinner and around the Christmas tree. Their faces are in photographs around the house. James, Al, and Lily walk past the graduation picture of Hogwarts’ 1978 class every morning when they come down the stairs.

Harry’s life is full of proof that his parents have lived and loved and fought and loved some more. The graveyard, somehow, feels so far away from all of that. Here, they are only dead. Only cold. Only rotting underground.

And for that, Harry has nothing; nothing but silence.

Lily Luna Potter kneels down, picks up a bundle of dried flowers from earlier in the month, and gently lays down the fresh ones she carried here.

“Dad, can you tell the story about the Snitch again?”, she asks. “The one grandpa drew.”

Her part.

“Well, it’s a bit embarassing for him”, says Harry, the same way he always tells the story, and Ginny softly chuckles next to him. “He was supposed to be taking an exam, see. Like you will, once you’re in Hogwarts. But he was already finished, because he was really smart, and so, to pass the time until everyone else was done, he started doodling this little Snitch. And he put your grandma’s initials in it, too.”

“L, and E”, says Lily promptly. “L for Lily, like me, and E for Evans, because her name was Evans before they got married.”

“Yeah. See, he already had a big crush on her, but he didn’t know what to do about it yet. He crossed it out when it was time to hand in the exam, so no one ever saw it except him.”

“And you”, Ginny says.

“And me.”

“I’m sure he drew more”, Lily says with all the confidence of a ten-year-old. “After they got together.”

“I’m sure he did”, Harry says, and Lily nods like that concludes the story.

The three of them fall silent. Chilly October wind tugs at them – Lily buries her nose deep in her scarf and steps closer to Harry, leaning against him.

Ginny does, too – her forehead is touching Harry's chin, and she keeps one arm wrapped tightly around him. All three of them are looking at the tombstone, and Harry feels Ginny’s hand resting on back. When he finally swallows and tears his eyes away from his parents, she is already there and looking at him.

“Are you okay?”, she asks. “It’s freezing.”

Harry turns around in his chair. Ginny is leaning against the door frame, already in her pyjamas, and though Harry can't make out her face in the dim light, he can hear a smile in her voice. He half-nods, half-shrugs, and turns back to his desk.

Ginny is having none of it.

“You’ve been weird this week”, she says. Because she’s Ginny, it’s not an accusation: She merely observes.

Harry listens to her footsteps on the wooden floor when she comes closer, putting her hands on his shoulders before easily wrapping them around his chest. Harry can feel her stomach rest against the back of his head and wonders what the fuck is wrong with him.

“Sorry”, he says flatly.

Ginny strokes the top of his head, and Harry lets it soothe him, even if he doesn’t think he deserves it.

“We can go to bed, if you want”, she says, “or you can tell me what’s going on.”

And the truth is, of course, that Ginny has watched him fuck up many, many times in the few years they’ve been together. She's been witness as he's forgotten things, and failed to show up, and broken promises he meant to keep when he made them. She was there when he didn't understand what bothered her so much when it was him that bought the house, and when he told her it was just money. She didn't turn around and leave, every time he tried to protect her and ended up hurting her instead. She was there and looked at him when he yelled and cried and pushed her away and said things he didn't mean.

And two weeks ago, when she told him she's pregnant, she was there when his face lit up, and when he kissed her like he's never kissed her before, and when he smiled so much his cheeks still hurt the next day.

So Harry decides to confess, not because he likes it, or because that makes it easier, or because he's any less ashamed. But because he knows that Ginny has already seen the worst of him, and that she won't think any less of him.

Even if Harry does.

"I'm not excited anymore", he says with a tight throat.

The silence that that sentence leaves rings in his ears. Even now, Harry knows that no judgement awaits him – no tantrum is coming. She’s not going to fight him. But she's going to be there and watch, unflinchingly, as he falls deeper and deeper into the dark hole he’s turning into, and he is so fucking sick of it.

"Okay", she says simply.

"It's not okay, Ginny, it's really, really fucking not –“

"Babe, you're spiralling."

She rubs his shoulders and takes long, steady breaths that Harry can synch his too. When he's stopped gasping like he's drowning overwater, Ginny reaches for his hand, and together they sit on the carpet by the couch, where Harry and Ron usually sit when they spend their weekends working on cases together.

“Alright”, she says quietly. “Talk to me.”

Harry fixes his blurry eyes on their entangled hands, but Ginny doesn’t. It’s the one favour she never does him: she never looks away.

“I’m supposed to be really fucking happy right now”, he says hoarsely. “And – I don’t think I am anymore, and I don’t even know why.”

Ginny is silent for a few moments while she takes this in.

“To be fair”, she says softly, “I was a bit surprised about how excited you were. It’s not like we were planning for it to happen so soon.”

“But I was”, Harry insists. If there’s nothing else he can do to make it better, he needs to make sure this part, at least, he gets across. “I promise I was excited, Gin, I was – it’s just … everyone’s making all these plans, and thinking about how we’re going to manage it with work and everything …”

He trails off.

„I know they’re a handful“, she says, smiling faintly. „And we can tell them to tone it down, if you want … but I don’t think that’s what’s going on.“

Harry looks around his office, searching for a way to say it that doesn’t sting.

“I started thinking about what things are going to be like when the baby is actually here, and … I just have a bad feeling.”

When he glances up at her, he can see her jaw clench: she's silently pressing her lips together, and Harry wants nothing more than to shove what’s left of him into the hole he’s become.

“Well”, she says quietly, “do you wish I wasn’t pregnant?”

Silence.

“I don’t know”, he mutters. “No…”

Ginny quietly lets out a breath. “Okay. But something’s wrong.”

Harry bites his lip, willing it to stop trembling. There are no words for the feeling that’s filling him up like cement – the stirring and shifting of heavy dread that consumes him. But there are words he is thinking – words he desperately needs to ask, so someone, anyone, can reassure him, and yet, words he cannot let himself say, for fear of speaking it into existence.

“What if I’ll be shit at it?”, he whispers. “What if this baby grows up and fucking despises me? And what if I’ll despise the baby, too?”

What follows is their heaviest silence yet. Her grip on his hands has loosened, though she hasn’t let go. When he glances up at her, something in her face shifts, and Harry knows they’ve fallen into their usual routine.

“That’s not going to happen, Harry.”

“You don’t know that.”

He falls: deeper and deeper into this most recent hole he’s carved out for himself, until him and the hole are one and the same thing. She finds him at the bottom and looks at the mess he’s made.

He deals Ginny the blow, and she takes it.

“I do know that”, she says fiercely. Her eyes are red. “Because I know you. And you’re not your relatives, Harry.”

There's a small, stinging silence.

“That's what is it”, she asks, “isn’t it?”

And Harry shrugs, and nods, and stares at the empty wall across from them. “I guess.”

Ginny rubs his hands while she sniffs. “Okay. I get that. But it’s not going to be like that, Harry. You’re not like that.”

Harry closes his eyes. “And what if that’s the only thing I’ll know to do?”

“I know for a fact”, she says, “that you’re better than that. I wish you could look at yourself sometimes, Harry … you wouldn’t be worried.”

Harry doesn’t bother to tell her that the very last thing he wants to do right now is look at himself. “What are you talking about?”

“Teddy”, she says simply. “I wish you could see yourself when you’re with him. The way you treat him … you are so full of love for this kid. And Teddy’s as good as your son – this won’t be different.”

Harry hasn’t thought about it like that.

“And you would never want him to feel the way you did”, she continues, after a brief moment of hesitation – with that quiet thunder in her voice that only ever breaks through when they’re talking about the Dursleys. “Because you remember the feeling, don’t you?” When he looks up, her eyes are wet and fiery, but she battles her way through the next sentence anyway, a strangled whisper, nothing more. “You’d make damn sure your own kids never know it.”

There is no point in pretending anymore: Harry lets hot, salty tears slip down his cheeks and drip off his chin. “Yeah, I would”, he whispers.

“That’s all I care about”, she says. “If anything, it’s going to make you a better Dad, Harry, not a worse one.”

She untangles her crossed legs with a sigh and slips onto his lap, and Harry holds her there. Once she’s comfortably sitting on his leg with one arm wrapped around his shoulders, he buries his face in the crook of her neck, and there they are, crying on his office floor like teenagers.

“Look, if it’s any consolation”, she says, “I’m pretty scared, too.”

"You'll be great", Harry mumbles, and he knows it to be true without question.

Ginny plays with his hair. “Why am I supposed to be such a natural at it?”, she asks quietly.

“I just know.” Harry lets himself put his head on her shoulder – there is no feeling quite like the weightlessness that comes with leaning on her. “And you’ve got your parents to look to …”

“I figured that was part of it.” Harry doesn’t respond – he doesn’t need to. “And that’s what scares me, funnily enough.”

She doesn’t quite meet his eye when he looks up. “Which is why I’d actually appreciate it if we could ask them to back off a little, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah – what’s going on?”

“Everyone’s so damn convinced I’ll be amazing at it.” Pause. Then – “Even you.”

Again, it is not an accusation.

“And I get it”, she says. “Because my Mum did such a fantastic job, how could I possibly be different?”

Quiet sarcasm has slipped into her voice. Harry doesn’t miss it.

“Well, I’m not my Mum. And – she’s great and all that, but I don’t want to be my Mum. I wish they’d all shut up for a minute and stop acting like I exited the womb ready to be a mother. Merlin, I’m twenty-one, and now I’m pregnant, there’s no way I’ve got it all figured out right now.”

“I didn’t realise”, he mutters. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t want you to worry about me. You had enough on your mind … I could tell.”

“I do think you’ll be great”, he says – desperate to offer anything at all.

“And you will, too”, she says with complete certainty. Something he finds oddly soothing, even if he can’t believe it, not yet. “We don’t have to know it all today. We’ll figure it out.”

Harry looks away. “I just … wish I was still excited.”

Ginny strokes his cheek. „Me, too“, she says softly, and Harry’s chest hums and aches at those words. “But I was there when you found out, you know. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this – stupidly happy. That was real. I thought it was, anyway.”

And that last bit somehow hurts even more than the fact that Harry never wanted to fall into this hole. He wanted so desperately for this to be okay.

“It was”, he says. “I promise.”

Ginny waits for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she blinks away her tears and says: “You’re acting like it’s all ruined, and it’s not, Harry. That baby isn’t even the size of a Snitch yet. Nothing’s lost, okay?”

“Okay”, he says finally. The hole inside of him hasn’t gone anywhere, but the urge to throw himself into the abyss has lessened slightly.

She smiles.

“I’d like to point out”, she says and sniffs, “that all these tears are entirely hormonal, because I’m pregnant, but I’m still cool and intimidating and all that.”